Canada General Discussion (2019-)

[Storr]

Damn, mine is the only Russian one. I was certain Italians were the biggest ethnic group.

This map gives a clear look at why Nunavut was split from the North West Territory.

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/brodiefenlon/status/1322764097813913602?s=20

[Storr]

Canada in many ways is becoming more like US with less of an East vs. West divide but more coasts vs. interior.  Even US actually did at one time sort of have divide, after all in 1976, Carter won almost all the states east of the Mississippi, while Ford dominated most of the Western states, even West Coast. 

Minor nitpick, but it wouldn't really be "coasts vs interior" in Canada, because BC is the only highly-populated coastal area and most Canadians live in the interior. It's more like "metropolitan vs rural areas", which already somewhat exists in terms of Liberal support, but there are notable exceptions (most obviously, Calgary and Edmonton being CPC-voting metro areas, and the maritimes LPC-voting rural area).

I think better might be major body of water vs. away from one since if you count Great Lakes and St. Lawrence as coasts then this does more or less pan out.

Makes sense. Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence are great for transportation, leading to more industry and population, and more of a left lean

I was randomly wondering recently why the Maritimes don't have large cities (on the scale of Boston, New York, or Philadelphia) along Canada's Atlantic coast similar to the US Northeast and settled on it possibly being because of a lack ideal natural harbors due to the topography of the region. Of course, I'd neglected to take into account the St. Lawrence. There's not as much of a need for large coastal port cities when there's a massive navigable body of water flowing directly inland.

[Storr]

Erin O'Toole is officially out. 73 to 45.

Has anyone told the truckers? I'm sure O'Toole's removal will satisfy them and they'll go home peacefully once they hear the news.

[Storr]

Patrick Brown is a non-starter, given that he went much further in his attempt to "liberalize" the Ontario PCs than O'Toole did with the federal Conservatives.  Basically the Justin Trudeau of the Conservative Party.

Caroline Mulroney would literally be the Justin Trudeau of Conservatives.

[Storr]

Trudeau is now meeting with the leaders of the opposition parties. If I had to guess, it could very well be to invoke the Emergencies Act.

"Just watch me."

I feel like sending in the military would be an excessive move. People blocking ports of entry and annoying the residents of Ottawa isn't comparable to terrorists bombing institutions and kidnapping diplomats/government officials (the FLQ hadn't yet killed Laporte when the War Measures Act was enacted). If you're going to take any action against the truckers have the police to arrest them or set up a perimeter allowing the border crossings to reopen and then send in the military to protect downtown Ottawa and border crossings as a show of force (like the US sending in the National Guard to the Capitol after the January 5th "legitimate political discourse" happened).

[Storr]

Impeach Trudeau !!

There is no impeachment in Canada, which means that you are supporting an unconstitutional coup against the elected Canadian government.

Western Canada should secede and The US should help them become their own nation

They never would, as British Columbia wouldn't follow them and the new country would be landlocked.

Yeah, Wexit has always been a nutty right-wing fantasy. Leaving an international trading bloc and actual secession from a country are two very different things. When it comes to the US relationship with Canada, it has long been policy to support a strong united Canada. I can’t think of any benefits the US would gain from Western or Quebec independence.

Relatedly, I’ve long been in favor of some kind of EU-like US-Canada open borders agreement/union. Obviously the business community and establishment would be in favor of such an arrangement. The only reason I could see it facing significant opposition from either side would be due to Canadian anti-Americanism related
fears about large numbers of Americans moving north and impacting/watering down Canadian culture.

[Storr]

Example A of how gun control does not stop mass killings. 

Maybe, but Canada has a lot fewer mass killings than the US. Must be a coincidence.

[Storr]

I don't believe it was mentioned in this thread, but for the first time ever, Canada reached a population of 40 million last month. 30 million was reached in 1997. That now makes Canada more populous than California, something that hasn't been true since 1982.


"Canada's population growth rate currently stands at 2.7 per cent. That's the highest annual growth rate since 1957, when Canada was in the middle of its post-war baby boom, says Statistics Canada."

"Canada's population grew by a record 1.05 million last year and about 96 per cent of the rise was due to international migration, the agency said."

https://twitter.com/StatCan_eng/status/1669780688969560064?s=20

[Storr]

"I hadn't realized until recently that Canada has abandoned its old selective high-skill immigration policy.

In 2023 Canada's population grew by over 1.2 million.
(By comparison, the US population grew by about 1.7 million in 2023, according to one estimate I've seen.)

As a result, the inflation rate for shelter has been running at 5-8% per year.

People on low income are usually renters, and they are paying the price.

PS it's easiest to look at overall population growth because there are so many bureaucratic categories of "immigration" (students visas used as a hack to become permanent, asylum claims, etc., etc.).

Numbers of births and deaths are similar [360k births vs. 332k deaths] so there is no natural increase.

These charts are from a report by economists at a bank.
https://www.nbc.ca/content/dam/bnc/taux-analyses/analyse-eco/etude-speciale/special-report_240115.pdf"

I'm reading the report now because I've always found demographics and immigration interesting. Their conclusion: "Canada is caught in a population trap that has historically been the preserve of emerging economies. We currently lack the infrastructure and capital stock in this country to adequately absorb current population growth and improve our standard of living. Our policymakers should set Canada's population goals against the constraint of our capital stock, which goes beyond the supply of housing, if we are to improve our productivity. At this point, we believe that our country's annual total population growth should not exceed 300,000 to 500,000 if we are to escape the population trap."



https://twitter.com/whyvert/status/1754357672290238690?s=20

[Storr]

Family Receives Wrong Body After Cuban Authorities Send Canadian Man's Body to Russia

"Faraj Allah Jarjour, a Canadian man who died in Cuba in March, was buried in a Russian town north of Moscow after Cuban government workers mistakenly switched two bodies before repatriating them to the wrong countries, according to his family.

The Jarjour family, who are originally from Syria and now live in Laval north of Montreal, were vacationing in Varadero, Cuba, when Faraj Jarjour, 68, died suddenly while swimming in the ocean March 22."